Chapter 4: Possible answers to
Study Questions

1. Matthews prefers the term
"word-formation" instead of "derivation,"
because within a lexeme it is not necessarily obvious that one
word is derived from another, and because there are also
inflectional derivations. First, there are pairs of words such as
Italian ZIO 'uncle' and ZIA 'aunt' and CUGINO 'male cousin' and
CUGINA 'female cousin'. We cannot tell whether ZIO is derived
from ZIA or ZIA from ZIO because the words are equally complex,
as with CUGINO and CUGINA. Second, words can be derived within a
lexeme. Generations is the plural derived from generation,
just as generation (N) is derived from generate
(V). To avoid ambiguity, "word-formation" is preferable
to "derivation."

2. In English, a word-form such as attentiveness
can be derived from another word, attentive, and from attentiveness,
inattentiveness can be derived. In both of these examples,
affixes are added to an existing word-form to derive another
word-form. By the same token, we could say that all of the
word-forms are derived from lexemes, and all of the lexemes are
derived from other lexemes. For example, ATTENTIVENESS is derived
from the lexeme ATTENTIVE, and so on. The process of word
formation, then, can be said to involve the forming of 'words'
from either word forms or lexemes. In Latin, noun, verb, and
adjective forms are said to be paradigmatic, or sets of inflected
word forms belonging to the same lexeme. Since Latin does have
uninflected word-forms, it is necessary to say that lexemes
(abstract lexical units) are derived from other lexemes. To make
this more clear; as mentioned above, English produces different
word-forms by inflecting existing word-forms. Latin cannot do
this. For example, ve:rum 'truth' is a noun, while ve:ra
'true' is an adjective. It cannot be said that ve:ra is
derived from ve:rum, because ve:rum is an
inflected form belonging to a different paradigm, and therefore
cannot derive a word-form in another paradigm. In Latin, it seems
unlikely that word-forms in separate paradigms would be
arbitrarily derived from one another so as to get ve:ra
from ve:rum, or from any other word-form (such as
luceo 'shine') to another (such as lucidus 'shining').
For this reason, we say that Latin derivation involves lexemes,
rather than word forms.

3. "-trepid-" can be seen as the ROOT
of the words "intrepid" and "trepidation".
This 'root' is the smallest form that a word can be practically
broken down into. similarly, "jubil-" and
"butch-" can be seen as roots. Note that in English,
what is a 'root' and what is a larger 'stem' (an element that
forms the basis for another derived or compounded, etc. form ,
and is a lexeme on its own) is often the same. Take, for example,
the word "joy", which is simultaneouely root and stem.
In the case of "butch" (according to OED), the
situation is similar. However, "trepid" and
"jubil" are not independent words of their own; they
might contribute form and meaning to another word when they are a
part of that larger whole, but cannot exist separately.
Diachronically the situation may change through the process of
"backformation", in which the 'root' is reanalyzed as a
'stem' in terms of analogy with other words using the same affix
of the previously existing larger word. The classic English
example is "edit", from "editor". The larger
word "editor" was reanalyzed as having a stem
"edit" and an affix "-or" (phonetically
identically to the productive affix "-er"). This stem
was then BACKFORMED from the original single lexeme, single stem,
single root "editor".

4. The meaning of devived words is in part
synthetic or nocompositional in that the meaning is not
predictible from the sum of their parts. The meaning of derived
words is analytic or compositional when that meaning is
predictible based on the meaning of the composing morphemes. The
examples direction, generation, and action are
nouns that have been derived from verb forms. The derived noun
forms are partly analytic because they have the predictible
meaning 'the act of ... '. They are also partly synthetic because
each has an unpredictible sense: wrong direction, third
generation, court action. The examples unsavory and unholy
are partly analytic in that they have the predictible
meanings 'not savory' or 'not pleasing to the taste or smell' and
'not holy'. The same examples are partly synthetic in that there
is also an unpredictible sense for each such as in an
unsavory character and an unholy mess. The examples
jailor and prisoner are derived from jail
and prison with the analytic sense of 'person related
with ...'. But, unlike other examples such as baker and jailor,
a prisoner is a person who is jailed, rather than a person who
bakes or a person who jails. The exact meaning of the person
reference in this example is unpredictible and synthetic.

5. The pairs seem to represent the competition
between different formations with varying levels of productivity.
Some forms are restricted by their origins, like in-,
which being of Latin origin, applies more to Latin stems, while
the more recent un- is not so restricted. In terms of
semantic separation, un- readily negates a positive
aspect, while in- can occur with a wider range of less
direct meanings. Non- has a more neutral inflection, as
in the difference between unrenewable and nonrenewable,
with less of a negative and more of an informative meaning. Dis-,
on the other hand, seems to have even more of a negative
inflection than un-, as a totally negative reversal is
implied. The variations in productivity seem to relate to the
degree of freedom allowed to the affix by its meaning and its
origin.

6. Competition tends to inhibit productivity. A
word will not be created if it is not needed or if the sense it
conveys already exists in another word. For example, bishopess
is not necessary, because there aren't female bishops. Horse-ess
is not created because the word mare exists to specify a
female horse. Semantic implications also play a role, as
demonstrated by the many prefixes used to form negative
adjectives: in-, un-, non-, dis-, and a-. For
instance, immeasurable and unmeasurable do not
mean the same thing: in- is a Latinate prefix; non-
is neutral; a- is used scientifically. Analogy can
stimulate productivity of potential lexemes.

7. Looking at English syncronically, we can say
that some years ago there was a rule in the language that said
roughly "Add -ed to verbs to inflect them for
PAST," and DIVE was among the large number of verbs to which
this rule applied. Today, for many speakers of English, DIVE is
on a special list of exceptions to this rule, and has its own
special "rule" that says it should be changed
internally to dove in the PAST. Thus these two
synchronic snapshots made at different points in time reveal a
difference in "formation by rule." What brought about
this difference? This would seem to be a diachronic question for
which synchronic linguistics has no answer. The usual diachronic
answer is one that involves "creation by analogy."
Presumably there were sufficient people who started lumping DIVE
with verbs like DRIVE [drive:drove=dive: x ] so that a
new end-result was achieved. But how/why did they shift to this
sort of analogous thinking and away from the "V + -ed"
rule approach. Or are they really two different approaches?
Perhaps they had been analogizing all along using verbs like thrive
and writhe and the vast majority of other verbs
[bribe:bribed=dive: x ], etc., until one day they
happened to zero in on verbs like drive and strive, to
get a new and different result. Did dove come about by
rule or by analogy. "The answers are Yes and Yes; the choice
implied is unreal," says Matthews in response to similar
questions he poses involving derivation; our example with dive
involves inflection, where Matthews says "such
distinctions seem quite easy."

8.

(3) repay (possible affix: re- (V > V))

Although both "pay" and
"repay" are verbs, the expected meaning, should
"repay" be a derivation, would be that of 'payment
twice' or 'to pay again', or something to that effect.
"Repay" is a verb meaning to 'pay back', or 'return in
kind'. It may have originally been a derived form (a related
word, "requite", with the same meaning, originally came
from the affix "re-" and the stem "quite", an
obsolete form that used to mean 'to pay'), but if so, the meaning
has shifted over the years to the point that it can no longer be
said to be a purely derived form, despite its surface structure.

(5) rewrite V [other words on same pattern, incl. semantics?]

/ \

AF V

re write

(8) justice (possible affix: -ice)

The word "justice" may appear to be a
derived form of the word 'just'; and it probably was, in olden
days of yore. "Justice" comes from the Latin derived
form "justitia" (from the Latin root
"justus"), and is the result of further shift through
French and English over the intervening years. The regularized
spelling which applies to this word and similar ones
("malice", for example) seems to have applied at one
time to French loan words that were originally Latin derivations
of simpler roots. It is just historical coincidence that
"just" (from Latin "justus") was also
borrowed, and that the orthography should have resulted in so
similar a form in Modern English. There is otherwise no regular
application of an affix "-ice" in English.

(10) delight - not affixed

(13) optionality (possible affixes: -al (N > A), -ity (A > N))

The effect of these two affixes on a noun
should be to cancel the effects each have on the other, but
instead, their use (ie: "nationality") is to create a
noun indicating the manifestation, physical or abstract, of a
quality that is essential in the root word. The predicted meaning
of "optionality" should thus be something along the
lines of "an object with a non-compulsory nature". That
the word has been borrowed by linguists to refer to something a
great deal more specific is indication that the word can no
longer be seen as a purely derived form; its meaning is not
predictable from its elements.

(15) comfortable A [other words on same pattern, incl. semantics?]

/ \

V AF

comfort able

(18) uncouth (possible affix: un- (A > A))

This is a fascinating word, as it is
historically a derived form in Old English from the prefix
"un" (not) and the root "cuo" (known). There
is still an archaic meaning associated with "uncouth"
along these lines (referring to something foreign or unfamiliar,
ie: 'unknown'), but by and large it is seen today as a regular
derivation of the word "couth" ('suave,
sophisticated'). "Couth" is, of course, a
back-formation from the reanalyzed word "uncouth",
which now carries the meaning 'crude, unrefined'. Therefore,
although historically the story is somewhat more complex, the
existence of a well-used and recognized root, however it came to
be, and the regularity of the meaning after derivation, would
lead me to call the word "uncouth" a purely derived
English form.